


Athazagoraphobia

by BreeKaley



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Athazagoraphobia, Minor Character Death, Mostly OOC, Panic Attacks, Stiles's Pillow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3099185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreeKaley/pseuds/BreeKaley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athazagoraphobia – the fear of forgetting, being forgotten or ignored, or being replaced</p>
            </blockquote>





	Athazagoraphobia

No one understands Stiles’s obsession with this one pillow. How, even when the pack has a meeting that runs late and everyone is set on just lounging in Derek’s loft and watching sucky B-list movies until they pass out, Stiles will slip out, go home, cuddle to his pillow and finally sleep. Even Scott doesn’t understand when Stiles had a panic attack and had to go home and get his pillow because he left at his house and no one understands Stiles. No one ever fully understands the spasm-prone, clumsy, human that runs with wolves and still sleeps curled up to a pillow like it’s a childhood teddy bear. No one will ever understand because they don’t know everything; they don’t know what’s hidden under the layers of flannels and graphic tees and breakable skin, sunk deep into glass bones and paper arteries. The pillow looks normal enough, a flat pillow with a white pillowcase, a valley where Stiles’s head stretches across it. 

Identical to the secrets hidden below Stiles’s sharp tongue and quick wit, the pillow has a secret as well. It’s not supernatural, rather sentimental. Tucked inside the surrounding cloth, a hospital bracelet and photograph lies. Stiles remembers his mother fumbling with the bracelet on her frail wrist the night she died, she had ordered a nurse to take it off. Even as a boy, Stiles knew what that meant; it meant that Claudia, his mother, was dying. Dying even more than she had been dying, she was fewer ten feet from the metaphorical cliff that Stiles wanted to so desperately to push her back from. He wanted some miracle to happen and her to retreat from that dreadful cliff and he knew it was selfish because his mother was in pain and she was ready but Stiles wasn’t. Stiles wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready when the monitor flat-lined and a long continuous static noise surrounding that hospital room and that hospital bed. There was no one with shock paddles and a team trying to revive her, just still and quiet. Stiles gripped the hard plastic bracelet so hard that the skin split and blood poured and Stiles still felt numb. His father hadn’t shown up until twenty minutes later-or that’s what someone had told him, because to Stiles it could’ve been 20 years or 20 seconds-and had pulled him form the room, cleaned the bracelet and the wound and gave him a kiss on the forehead and told him to get his stuff from the room and go. 

Melissa was in there, preparing Stiles’s mother to go into the morgue. She didn’t say anything, just gave him a quick hug and a tear-ridden smile. Stiles asked if he could have the pillow, Melissa said yes, after a quick talk with his father. He put the bracelet in the pillowcase and grabbed his book bag and kissed his mother’s cold forehead like his father had done to him and whispered “Kocham cie, mamo.” He left before the doctors wheeled out his mother’s cot. 

That night, Stiles stopped believing in miracles.

It was a year after his mother died when Stiles got the photograph. The pillow was flat now. Despite thinking he would, Stiles didn’t get teased too badly when he was at school and had a panic attack and grabbed at the pillow that had taken up a residence in his book bag between his binder and his books. When he got home he’d take it out and throw it on the bed and do his homework and then probably play a video game or two with Scott and help him with his homework before Melissa would bring over some dinner and the three would eat. She would stay until the Sheriff got home, which could be anywhere from seven in the evening to two to three in the morning. 

Tonight, nearly a year after his wife’s death, the Sherriff was home at eight, nodded and smiled to Melissa and grabbed a bottle of whiskey the minute the door locked into place. Stiles went to his room, babbling obscenely under his breath just because he could feel a panic attack coming on for absolutely no reason, just because. He was almost over the edge; clutching the pillow in his lap and shaking-no vibrating-when he heard the crash. He ran downstairs, because he was scared but curious as to what made the sound. He could see his father disappearing into the guest room, he hadn’t been in his bedroom since Claudia’s death, sobbing and clutching the bottle to his chest. The sound had come from a picture frame, the glass was scattered around the floor. The frame was broken, but Stiles would deal with that later; he collected the glass with a broom and dustpan and dumped in trash. 

The picture was of his mother, smiling. The Sheriff had his arm around her and Stiles was balanced on her knee, no more than three years old. All were smiling, no sickness and death and pain and panic was etched on their faces. Stiles could feel tears brimming over his eyes and cascading down his face. He had almost forgotten was his mother looked like, with her warm smile and light brown hair and whiskey colored eyes and Stiles had almost forgotten how much he looked like his mother and Stiles had almost forgotten. 

His ears rang and his throat constricted when they notion came to his head. He had almost forgotten. He couldn’t breathe and he was sobbing and his father was sobbing too. Too much air and it wouldn’t go through Stiles’s throat. No, all that air went to his head and clogged him and this was a sensation that Stiles would never forget. He thumped his head against the liquor cabinet and muffled his scream with his flannel sleeve until he could breathe right again and he noticed he had dropped the picture. He grabbed it, looked up the guest bedroom’s locked door and ran up to his room. He locked his own door and laid the picture gingerly onto the pillow his mother had rested on a year before. 

He slept better that night than he had in since her death. 

After that, he started carrying the picture alongside the bracelet. Stiles would never forget again. 

So, yeah, the pack didn’t know that Stiles’s very lifeline was in that pillow and without it he felt lost at sea. They didn’t need to know. Stiles was content with being the most obvious mystery in the pack. Hell, one day, they would know more about Derek than him. He was fine with that.

Everything was fine, as long as he didn’t forget.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything except the plot. Comments are really, really appreciated. Any grammar and/or spelling mistakes pointed out would be appreciated.


End file.
